A manufacturer of special purpose vehicles that wished to remain anonymous.

“ Dedicated setups are absolutely the way to go. We operate on JIT. We reduced our steel inventory by 80%, $5 million a year.”

“ We use a high number of dedicated setups. Using dedicated setups allows us to pull a setup off the storage rack, put it in the press and be producing parts faster than we could set up a CNC machine. It’s also more cost effective to use UniPunch holders than to have our tool makers build a die, or to have one built on the outside. "

“ It is also quicker and easier to make a changeover or to sharpen the punches, much, much easier. Pulling a punch out of a UniPunch holder compared to a hard die is a world of difference. We also use hard dies and have our own die makers in house.”

How did you get started using UniPunch tooling?
“ Believe it or not, the company was using UniPunch when I started here 23 years ago. There have been no other holders other than UniPunch in here. I’ve looked at some others but they just weren’t working.

“ We’re utilizing UniPunch tooling better now by having dedicated setups. There was a lot of cost that was involved. It was not unusual for us to be buying $10,000 to $20,000 worth of UniPunch tooling in one shot to get to our dedicated tooling. We’ve been at this for 2-1/2 to 3 years to get to where we are right now.

“ When I started here there were a couple jobs that had dedicated tooling. The owner saw the benefit in it. He loved it. He initiated a lot of it. He signed the PO.”

How much time are you saving by using dedicated setups?
“ We’ve got it down from 30 minutes down to one minute. It takes longer to look for the setup than it does to get set up. Just set the proper shut height and you’re ready to go. The paperwork that the operator receives with the work order tells him where to go to find the setup."

“ Dedicated setups are absolutely the way to go. Going to dedicated setups has saved us 70% to 80% or more in setup time and converting it to run time. The operators themselves are really enjoying the dedicated tooling."

“ It used to be we have 30 or 40 jobs backed up. Material would be
overflowing. Now with the dedicated tooling the operators are saying, ‘Give me more, give me more.’

“ We used to have two full time people running those machines. We have reduced our labor requirement to one full time and once in a while we draw someone else over. Manpower has been dramatically reduced because we have organized our system for more high yield parts. A constant turn of parts. Almost every setup you see out there is run at least once a month, minimum."

“ A lot of the jobs you see out there are from the laser. The laser can sometimes buy six months before we invest in
dedicated tooling. The UniPunch tooling took work off of the lasers because the lasers were overloaded.

“ We had to justify buying dedicated tooling to the owner, but this was pretty easy to justify. We operate on JIT. We reduced our steel inventory by 80%, $5 million a year. We increased our number of runs per year because we don’t have to worry about setup time. We’re doing more with less. Our vendors come in and deliver steel, batteries, etc., weekly. We reduced our inventory and have almost doubled our output.”

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